This conference presentation was prepared for the AR | VR | MR 2023 Conference.

A lot is said about AR/VR—its advances, its promises and pitfalls—but little is said about the brilliant minds and skillful hands that envision AR/VR devices. This talk will honor technology pioneers and AR/VR innovators: how they shape and envision the world, and the impact they make. The talk will also address the systemic implications of AR/VR for society and the environment: how product decisions impact our planet and the responsibility to shape the AR/VR space with an ethical approach that cares for our world, our well-being, and future generations. I encourage AR/VR visionaries to look at the way they shape the world.

From traditional or Fresnel optics to pancake lenses, freeform prisms to waveguides, we'll explore how to select the right solution for your project and some of the decisions that went into Lenovo's family of AR and VR devices. We'll also explore some of the limitations for the ideal solution today and where the industry can help the AR/VR market expand in the future.

One of the most critical components of AR glasses is the “glass” itself - the combiner. Ultimately, the combiner has to function as a classical ophthalmic lens, i.e. fit each user well - physically and aesthetically - and provide custom corrective function. It should ideally look entirely transparent to the user as well as to those looking into the user’s eyes while creating no unwanted artifacts like rainbows or glows. On top of that, it has to deliver high-quality, bright, and power-efficient digital 3D imagery only to the user’s eyes while providing identical focus cues and prescription correction to the digital content as to the reality. Of course, it must be inexpensive, too. CREAL has developed and demonstrated its light-field HOE combiner that conceptually approaches all the above requirements. This talk will introduce how.

Lynx is an HMD manufacturer and made an early bet on camera passthrough for augmented reality. This Mixed Reality approach, encompassing both VR and AR in the same headset, is sometimes opposed to optical see-through systems. But which one has the Truth? Can passthrough systems reach the glass form-factor? Can smartglasses provide Mixed Reality? We will try to compare these architectures and imagine which system will reach mass adoption first, by also looking beyond the optical choices with metrics like price, timeline and use-cases.

HIDO is a new technology that is being developed with the aim of providing mixed reality smartglasses with a wide FOV (60x45 degrees) and an elegant form factor. HIDO, Holographic Integrated Display and Optics, uses a radically different approach from other technologies. The Display and the Optics are all integrated in the lens of the smartglasses. We will present how this provides considerable advantages for the future of mixed reality and what is the status and next steps of the current developments of LusoVU in this technology.

NSR demonstrates two prototypes of Transparent Optical Module based on Micro OLED and Micro LED custom displays. Near eye Transparent Optical Module (TOM) will solve the challenge integrating the imaging module of today’s AR technologies into the design of everyday eyewear frames and optics by replacing the light engine and optical engine with a single multilayer hermetically sealed transparent module that can be embedded in the anterior surface of an eyeglass lens or removably attached thereto. The real image and the virtual image are viewed through the point of regard on the eyeglass lens. Optics employ active or passive micro lens arrays. TOM is a thin (<2mm), lightweight, and power efficient module. We are discussing eye box, image quality and management of stray light effects of TOM’s design.

The talk will focus on the exploration process for an all-day, all light conditions, all environments, compatible technology considering the specific thresholds of the Mobile-AR to meet the consumer market expectations as Fashion, Function, Weight & Power, Manufacturability, and Cost. Further, the talk will discuss design aspects, related to world-class standard regulations for spectacles, that are critical for the formulation of a valid Mobile-AR solution.

The panel will address questions relative to technologies used today or in the future to integrate Rx in consumer or commercial XR glasses, goggles or HMDs. We will look into technical as well as operational challenges that come with stylish all-day eyewear, as well as potential use of 3D printing, or simple integration of inserts.

Just six months after the release of its next-generation headset, Magic Leap has already seen a breakthrough in the deployment of new use cases across healthcare, manufacturing, retail and the public sector – a validation of the significant market opportunity in enterprise AR. And with more companies entering the field every day, AR has cemented its status as the core technology poised to unlock the next era of computing. To tell the full story of Magic Leap’s journey over the last three years, product chief Jade Meskill will provide an in-depth look at how the company conceived its vision for enterprise AR; the key challenges it overcame in designing Magic Leap 2; and most importantly, the real companies, use cases and solutions being deployed in the enterprise today.

Optical AR engines today are designed for people who do not need vision correction. However, the vast majority of users is myopic, hyperopic or presbyopic. Their need for Rx integration shifts AR devices into a medical-grade business environment, protected in many regions by existing stakeholders. For all-day use, consumers expect affordable AR solutions and a secure end-to-end vision correction process with a convenient buying experience. Regardless of the augmentation technology, tooz is enabling medical-grade Rx solutions for various curved and planar combiners.

Vuzix has been a pioneer in the AR/VR industry with over 25 years of experience delivering solutions to the industrial, consumer, and military markets. Our broad experience includes the first commercially available surface relief grating based waveguide systems. From specification to design, to mold production, to replication, to test and system integration, we do it all in-house, in Rochester New York. Vuzix’ experience means that we can customize a ground up system based on specifications, offer a reference design, or provide design parameters so we can build to print based on a customer’s own waveguide layout. Our expanded manufacturing capabilities coupled with our experience allows Vuzix to deliver accurately produced parts in volume at price points that make market acceptance possible; all with designs that are fashion forward and able to address the needs of the broader markets.

In his presentation, Dispelix's CTO, Dr. Ismo Vartiainen, discusses Dispelix's design vision for the development of state-of-the-art waveguide combiners for eyeglass-form XR glasses. The presentation covers the key features of Dispelix's self-developed, powerful, proprietary XR waveguide design software. In addition, the presentation includes examples of the optimization of various optical and visual properties of XR waveguides using different development approaches from novel grating structures to advanced optical materials. Finally, the manufacturing technology choices, their advantages, and relationship to building stable, scalable mass manufacturing capability and high-quality waveguide products are discussed.

We have successfully developed the best-in-class DOE waveguide type full-color display for AR glasses. It achieves 400+ nits/lumen of efficiency and the 60 degree FOV simultaneously with 2 layers. DOE is formed by high refractive index glass with resin. Our in-house built simulation tool can manage optimization of various DOE and layouts including resin and coating that is beyond capability market-available calculators.

Over the last 55 years, Applied Materials innovations have fundamentally changed how the world works and the way people interact with each other through technology. Today, we help make products such as computers, mobile devices and flat panel displays not only possible, but also affordable for millions of people around the world. Our Engineered Optics team is leveraging Applied’s decades of expertise in manipulating materials at an atomic level on an industrial scale to create new optical components such as diffractive waveguides and metaoptics. We anticipate these optical devices will have a huge impact on many industries, including AR/MR. During this presentation, Wayne McMillan, General Manager, will show how Engineered Optics can help to make every day AR headsets and glasses possible

Mr. Jeonghun Ha, CTO of LetinAR, the inventor of PinMR™ (“Pin Mirror™”) and PinTILT™ technology, will present current technical challenges regarding the mass production of injection-molded plastic AR waveguides and recent breakthroughs in recent years. Based on the simple PinTILT™ structure, the production cost of plastic AR optics has been reduced significantly. Combined with its lightweight form factor, high power efficiency, and color uniformity, the launch of truly affordable AR smartglasses for the public is right around the corner.

Waveguide displays provide a transparent optical solution to deliver an augmented digital layer to the physical world. We will present reflective waveguide technology and specifically our progress with a novel 2D pupil expansion waveguide architecture. This 2nd generation 2D reflective waveguide architecture provides further improvements in image quality together with a very small waveguide entrance pupil. This small waveguide entrance pupil allows for very compact projector modules that can be easily integrated into the consumer glasses frame. It also enables for direct bonding of optical elements on the waveguide’s surface providing seamless integration of an encapsulation layer or Rx solution directly on the waveguide. The projector together with the waveguide assembly provide a crisp, high-resolution image and significant advantages in power efficiency, color uniformity, light leakage, and glare free view of the physical world.

Predictions for the explosive growth in adopting mixed reality are driven by the promise of new technologies to enable truly different types of experiences. The goal is to create a seamless blend of the real and the virtual that is not possible with any existing device. To build a true mixed reality device, it is necessary to both accurately monitor the outside world and feed it back to the user augmented with digital content. Imec is uniquely positioned in its ability to provide a plethora of technologies to realize those functions. Our NIL capabilities provide processing for surface relief gratings and meta-structures on large-area high-refractive index glass and standard substrates, to produce both large field-of-view waveguide combiners and flat optical components for sensing and illumination systems. Other modules can benefit from advances in LiDAR sensing and wafer level optics, while miniaturized ultrasound transducers will enable mid-air gesture recognition.

Founded 55 years ago, CEA-Leti is a Research Center based in Grenoble - France dedicated to innovative Microelectronic and Photonic components developments for breakthrough applications. Relying on high-level clean rooms facility, CEA-Leti offers to industrial partners the ability to transform an idea (TRL1) into a pre-industrial product (TRL5). Active in display domain for more than 20 years, CEA-Leti aims at being a key-player in AR/VR/MR developments. This presentation will propose a panel of our activities in the playground with microLEDs displays, but also innovative retinal projection concept and beyond optical considerations the development of new functionalities taking into account human cognition through eXtended Reality.

This panel will welcome several industry players involved in waveguides for augmented reality applications, be they reflective or diffractive. During the panel discussion, we will exchange around the technology choices, the challenges, the trade-offs and the possible way that the industry should follow towards making augmented reality for the consumer a reality.

Nreal, a startup in the consumer augmented reality space, will share our journey and learnings in this talk. We will discuss how we progressed from using optical components and creating bulky prototypes to ultimately crafting a product that was able to be manufactured and shipped over 100,000 units in 2022.

Avegant has developed the industry’s smallest LCoS engines, and is now introducing its new AG-30L2, the second generation of its small LCoS engines. Ed Tang, CEO and Founder, will be presenting the new design and its improvement in volume, footprint, efficiency and manufacturability.

Bulky design, uncomfortable weight, low outdoor visibility, poor quality visuals – all have led so far to mass market AR glasses adoption being slow, and key consumer expectations have not yet been met. Satisfying the requirements of all-day wearable and daylight-bright consumer AR eyewear in terms of size, weight, brightness and image quality imposes significant engineering challenges for display solutions. At TriLite, we are engineering for consumer acceptability - Light, Bright, Clear, and Tiny. TriLite has developed the world’s smallest, lightest, and brightest laser beam scanner (LBS) that is designed for high-volume consumer AR applications to enable everyone to enjoy augmented vision as lightweight, comfortable, and stylish as the eyewear of today.

Laser Beam Scanning (LBS) based light engines for AR glasses provide most advantageous features and characteristics to meet the extreme requirements for stylish AR glasses with respect to compactness, low power consumption, high brightness, high contrast, large field of view and low-cost mass manufacturing capability. The key component to enable this is a biaxial MEMS mirror chip that is hermetically vacuum packaged already on wafer level. A proprietary glass forming and opto-packaging technology enables MEMS mirror based laser scanning modules of extremely large field of view of up to 180 degree (1D) or more than 100 degree x 50 degree (2D). OQmented integrates these MEMS chips into most compact high performance light engines for monocular and binocular all-day wearable AR glasses.

Microdisplays have become essential for wearable AR/VR/MR devices. Emissive microdisplays, such as OLED or µLED, provide significant advantage in terms of form factor and power consumption, whereas OLED microdisplays are prominent in various professional and consumer near-to-eye visualization devices, assisted-reality wearables or electronic viewfinders already. The underlying OLED-on-Silicon technology has reached industry maturity, in particular for OLED microdisplays, yet embedded opto-electronic sensing features too. This presentation will report on latest achievements in high-resolution and ultra-low power OLED microdisplays and OLED-on-Silicon process technology.

Porotech is revolutionising microLED displays with its DynamicPixelTuning™ (DPT™) technology. Each individual DPT™ pixel is a single LED emitter with tuneable wavelength emission all the way from red to blue. There are no ‘RGB’ sub-pixels, no pixel stacking architectures, no filters and no colour conversion technologies involved – full colour is possible at the wafer level, with no complex manufacturing required and no need to mix different material systems. DPT™ has been enabled entirely on InGaN-based material through Porotech’s engineered porous GaN (PoroGaN®) platform technology, which is a simple, repeatable and fully scalable process. With key microLED microdisplay manufacturing barriers removed and new realms of display system design unlocked, Porotech is positioned to deliver the microLED display solutions which will meet the demands of consumer AR.

This conference presentation was prepared for SPIE SPIE AR, VR, MR Invited Talks 2023.

Mixed-Reality, including Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR), is expected to become the next-generation computing platform. Display is a critical component for enabling this vision. Satisfying the very demanding requirements of high brightness, full-colour, small form factor and low power consumption for AR remains a big challenge that has drawn significant investment. This presentation will address the challenges and opportunities in AR microdisplays, the main approaches used to realize full color and the manufacturing strategy for achieving scale. It will explain how Mojo’s Micro-LED platform uses proprietary high-performance QD to produce the industry’s leading solution for AR.

This industry talk was made at the SPIE AR/VR/MR Conference.

Wafer-level nanoimprint lithography (NIL) has increasingly become a key enabling technology that supports the manufacturing of new devices and applications across the photonics industry. Being the most precise replication technique, NIL has proven to be ideally suited for facilitating the patterning of structures with challenging complex geometries as well as high-resolution features down to sub-100nm resolution. A key advantage of NIL is the straightforward pattern transfer of e.g. optical components with advanced patterning requirements into the bulk substrate material as complex multi-height structures can be replicated with high fidelity over a large area in a single imprinting and single etching step. Crucial for the fabrication of these highly individual and best performing optical structures is a matching combination of mastering techniques, replication equipment and processes including qualified imprint materials. This talk reviews the capabilities of Nanoimprintlithography nowadays and addresses a path from proto-typing using a single DIE master to a fully populated wafer-level master required for production. Factors ensuring a mature high-volume production compatible replication of optical structures by UV NIL will be discussed with respect to equipment requirements and material properties.

End users’ expectation to smartglasses is benchmarked by today’s close-to-perfect displays in smartphones and the fashionable wearability of smartwatches with all-day battery power. The industry’s ambition to make an AR device part of everybody’s daily life requires uncompromising optical technologies. The architecture of choice promising to deliver this north star performance are waveguides. The material of choice to deliver the required performance of glass. Within the waveguide family, different light management technologies are considered: (a) diffractive structures (surface relief gratings or volume holographic gratings) manufactured by nano-photonic technologies or (b) reflective- geometric waveguides manufactured by conventional optical technologies with high requirements on tolerances. Driven by the commitment to define the industry’s reference of waveguide materials and components, we present our progress on SCHOTT’s two product lines: (1) SCHOTT RealView® high index glass wafers with progress in geometrical wafer quality, material innovation and coating technologies. (2) SCHOTT’s reflective waveguides, co-created in partnership with Israelian company Lumus, where the presentation will focus on manufacturing aspects of our new system architectures satisfying system design requirements of the industry.

HOYA is one of the very few elite-level companies for AR MR industry, who covers not only optical material and optical fabrication category on wafer level, but also owns advanced photolithography knowledge to help the industry on waveguide process level. HOYA’s unparallel expertise in optical glass technologies enables them to be the best supplier for high refractive index wafers, and HOYA’s decades of experience in developing and introducing advanced photolithography processes for global semiconductor market brings a completely new dimension to the AR MR waveguide display market. In this talk, you will hear about HOYA’s latest progresses for serving the accelerating AR MR waveguide development from multiple depths and angles.

This presentation explains the key benefits of inkjet coated high index of refraction nanoimprint materials and high index of refraction light absorbing black materials in XR waveguide manufacturing. With the inkjet nanoimprint materials, coating film thicknesses can be controlled to obtain locally optimized film thicknesses for the specific nanoimprint process. This process allows a more controlled way to optimize the residual layer thickness and total efficiency of the waveguide. Internal reflections within the AR waveguide are a major source for reduced contrast. The index matching light absorbing material provides a simple solution for controlling the internal reflections. When high refractive index substrate edges are coated with matching refractive index light absorbing coatings, there is a clear reduction in reflected and scattered light compared with non-RI matched solutions.

The need for remote working technologies driven by the pandemic and the popularity of virtual reality devices is driving a broad interest in augmented reality (AR) devices for enterprise as well as consumer applications. AR devices consist of three key components to deliver a superior augmented experience to users. Waveguides is one of the key components that capture the image/light from the display engine to deliver digital images as well as real world images to user's eyes. This presentation will discuss how TOK is leveraging its core competencies in designing, engineering, and high volume manufacturing of high purity optical materials for semiconductor manufacturing, to develop novel optical materials that enable creation of structured surfaces for diffractive and meta optical elements for XR devices. We have developed high refractive index, low refractive index, and gap fill/planarization materials that can be applied using several technologies such as spin coating and ink-jet for replication technologies like lithography, nanoimprint lithography to enable AR/XR devices and emerging metaverse.

One of the primary cost-drivers of AR glasses is the optical waveguide. Yet, it is challenging to maintain the quality of the complex waveguide manufacturing in higher volumes. Large area Roll-to-Plate (R2P) nanoimprinting is a viable route forward, combining the UV imprint accuracies with the large-area display manufacturing method. Therefore, it is the proposed solution to manufacture optical waveguides for AR glasses in the consumer market. At Morphotonics, we strive to build the foundation for a future where large-area R2P nanoimprinting produces AR optical waveguide combiners in typical high quantity display volumes. In this talk, we will address the upscaling process required for AR optics manufacturing via large-area nanoimprinting as well as the current status in terms of performance, materials, and manufacturability. Additionally, we will highlight the exemplary work recently undertaken with our industry partners to validate the entire value chain from design to mastering to replication on panel-level nanoimprint equipment using rectangular high refractive index glass substrates and high refractive index resins.

Magic Leap’s vertically integrated waveguide combiner production solution has enabled a revolutionary AR display, scaled with high yield and low cost. This presentation will examine the strategy and key capabilities needed to manufacture large field of view diffractive waveguide combiners with high efficiency, contrast, sharpness, and color uniformity. Learn how full control over key materials, equipment, and test technologies enable Magic Leap to deliver high-performance, low-cost waveguide combiners on a rapid timeline.

Metalenz is commercializing metasurfaces--a new optical element that allows complete control over all aspects of light (phase, wavelength, intensity, and polarization) with a single, planar semiconductor layer. Comprised of subwavelength nanostructures, a single metasurface can carry out optical functions typically requiring four or more conventional refractive and/or diffractive optics. In this talk, we will discuss how we’ve taken metasurfaces from lab to commercialization and how Metalenz’s ability to simplify and shrink complex optical systems enables advanced sensing for improved XR experiences.

The most critical key to enable Metaverse glasses is the display. In here we present a novel display solution to enable Metaverse glasses to achieve lightweight , small form factor, low power, high resolution, best image qualities, and affordable AR glasses to consumers.

Sunny OmniLight is a subsidiary of Sunny Optical Technology. We provide a variety of engineered optics solutions adopted by AR glasses, for both sensing and viewing. In this presentation we will focus on the manufacturing process of AR waveguides and micro-projectors. With Sunny’s decades of know-how in optics and expertise in mass production, plus our strong determination in the engineered optics industry, we believe we could add value to help accelerate the approaching to the industry critical point.

This industry talk was made at the SPIE AR/VR/MR Conference.